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A few people sitting down and reading the bible.

Public Schools, Religion, and Race

It was no coincidence that public school secularization and desegregation were happening, and failing, simultaneously.
Harriet Tubman.

How a Young Harriet Tubman Found Solace in Syncretic Religion

Childhood trauma led Minty Ross (Harriet Tubman) to seek divine intervention.
Demonstrators gather outside the U.S. Supreme Court holding signs with "Let us pray" and "young women for America."
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2022 Saw Conservative Gains on Education Issues. But They May Be Short-lived.

Conservatives’ veneration for the founders opens the door for a secular vision for America’s public schools.
A city skyline at night

The City That Never Stops Worshipping

Though some have likened it to Sodom and Gomorrah, New York City has a long history of religious vibrancy.
Group of men including clergy.

Unearthing The Surprising Religious History Of American Gay Rights Activism

Years before Stonewall, many clergy members were standing on the front lines for gay rights.

What American Nuns Built

Both the nation and the Church have depended on the energy and expertise of nuns. They’re vanishing. Now what?
Image by Hans Glaser depicting a blood rain that supposedly occurred near Dinkelsbühl in Germany’s Franconia region in 1554.

Strange Gods: Charles Fort’s Book of the Damned

Rains of blood and frogs, mysterious disappearances, objects in the sky: these were the anomalies that fascinated Charles Fort in his Book of the Damned.
Senator J.D. Vance and Patrick Deneen at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Toward a Christian Postliberal Left

A truly Christian postliberalism would imagine and enact an alternative modernity with a different standard of progress.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Meets His Spirit Animal

Some Americans who have lost faith in traditional institutions are finding spirituality in this Denver church—and in themselves.
Black churchgoers attending a sermon.

Democrats Can’t Rely on the Black Church Anymore

The path to winning the Black vote no longer runs through the church door.
Martin Luther King Jr. speaking to an anti-Vietnam War rally in 1967.

The Anti-War Political Tradition: An Introduction

Anti-war politics has a rich historical tradition, one that seems to be in desperate need of revival.
Photo of United States bill, saying "In God We Trust."

The Deep Religious Roots of American Economics

Any attempt to understand the complexities of American economic thought without considering the significant role of religious beliefs is incomplete.
A homeless man eating a meal in a park.

Good Deeds Unpunished

American law should protect the right of individuals to engage in charitable acts.
Harriet Tubman.

The Radical Faith of Harriet Tubman

A new book conveys in dramatic detail what America’s Moses did to help abolish slavery. Another addresses the love of God and country that helped her do so.
A painting of Elizabeth Clare Prophet.

The Prophet Who Failed

After the apocalypse that wasn’t.
Pro-Israel counterprotesters hold Israeli flags on the edges of a pro-Palestine encampment at Northeastern University in Boston, April 26, 2024.

The New Anti-Antisemitism

The response to college protests against the war on Gaza exemplifies the darkness of the Trumpocene.
A billboard next to a road that reads, "Hell is real."

How 19th-Century Spiritualists ‘Canceled’ the Idea of Hell to Address Social and Political Concerns

Spiritualists believed that after shedding the body in death, the spirit would continue on a celestial journey and help those on Earth create a more just world.
Séance with spirit manifestation, 1872, by John Beattie.

Immortalizing Words

Henry James, spiritualism, and the afterlife.
A burning candle in front of the American flag.

The Origins of Conservatism’s ‘Gnostic’ Meme

You can thank Eric Voegelin for the right’s clichéd catchall critique for the left.
Statute of Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, with construction hook ready to remove it.
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History Shows the Danger of Comparing Trump to Jesus

It’s important to remember why analogies to Jesus should stay out of the political realm. The results are always ugly.
Still from the 2023 indie film "Late Night with the Devil"

The Role of Talk Shows in Sensationalizing the Satanic Panic of the 1980s

"Late Night with the Devil," a “found footage” horror film, perfectly captures the mood and style that surrounded media depictions of the occult in the 1970s.
Donald Trump speaks to the Pastors Leadership Conference at New Spirit Revival Center on September 21, 2016, in Cleveland, Ohio.

Spreading the Bad News

Right-wing evangelicalism’s moral and religious descent into Trumpism has been near-total. Is there a way out?
An illustration of a solar eclipse next to a portrait of James Fenimore Cooper.

Solar Eclipses in American History

How the spectacle of the 1806 solar eclipse impacted the national consciousness.
Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln’s Faith

The President's spiritual journey transformed him and the nation.
Children in a kindergarten classroom at the Horace Mann School, Tulsa, Okla., 1917.
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Yes, Schools Should Teach Morality. But Whose Morals?

Belief that schools must teach moral values is older than public schools themselves. But whose morals?
A faux Brazilian village constructed for Henry II and Catherine de’ Medici on the banks of the Seine in Rouen, France, and inhabited by fifty Tupinambá people who were forcibly brought there from Brazil, 1550.

The Discovery of Europe

A new book investigates the indigenous Americans who were brought to or traveled to Europe in the 1500s—a story central to the beginning of globalization.
A drawing of the 1833 Leonid meteor shower above a village.

The Massive Meteor Shower That Convinced People the World Was Ending

Wednesday night will bring a brilliant meteor shower, but the far bigger Leonid shower 190 years ago had people believing Judgment Day was at hand.
New York state legislator George Michaels thinks hard at his desk

Revisiting New York’s Historic Abortion Law in “Deciding Vote”

Jeremy Workman and Robert Lyons’s film reconstructs the passage of a 1970 law that made the state a sanctuary for people seeking abortions.
Peter Waddell's "A Vision Unfolds" imaginatively depicts Benjamin Banneker advising President Washington and fellow surveyor Andrew Ellicott on the layout of the proposed federal capital.

Banneker’s Answer to Jefferson: “I Am an American”

The black naturalist, astronomer, surveyor, and almanac-writer Benjamin Banneker took issue with Thomas Jefferson’s attitude toward “those of my complexion.”
Max von Sydow and Jason Miller in ‘The Exorcist.’

‘The Exorcist’ & Catholicism

What explains the traditionalist Catholic infatuation with ‘The Exorcist’?

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